Putting the Facts in Perspective on how the Press failed Nigeria setting the wrong agenda and excessively attacking ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo in breach of professional ethics on absolute neutrality! A brief historical guide to the build-up of facts and culmination in the present political dilemma of political uncertainty. A conclusive personal view on the possible way forward for the Nigerian Press.

The critical election of Chief Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo in 1999 will continue to generate interest and comments especially among political historians and researchers alike because it was a watershed in the nation’s political evolution. Looking back, Obasanjo’s mandate gave expression to the burning desire by the Nigerian people to have democracy rather than prolonged military rule. It was also a mark of conviction among the strategic power elite that he had the leadership credentials to restore waning hope and stabilise the polity. Of course, the effective revival of the nation’s economy was also germane.

In all this, it was instructive that the former president would have to democratise leadership and governance because democracy, particularly in a plural setting, will only be useful to the extent that it engenders popular participation. Fortuitously, the idea that Chief Obasanjo speaks with the generality of the people on his programmes and policies via Radio Nigeria was born, running in the process, 15 editions of robust engagements and uncensored interactions with every category of the populace in a monthly programme known as The President Explains.

Perhaps in an attempt to preserve his legacy, the former president has now published the substantive issues in the programme in a book form retaining the title: The President Explains. The 389-page work jointly published by Radio Nigeria and Sola Ojewusi and Associates in association with Attorney Owolabi Salis (Salis Law P.C. Broadway, New York) is in fifteen chapters with a postscript on the history of the programme as narrated by the production crew.

Former Director-General of Radio Nigeria, Dr. Eddie Iroh, who originated the idea of the programme and his successor, Barrister Yusuf Nuhu, wrote their different perspectives on the utility of the programme while the renowned scholar, Professor Akin Mabogunje, presented the book in a thought-provoking foreword. Each chapter opens with an abstract introducing the various topics and ends with a selection of topical comments grouped under the banner: Words on marble. A quick reference.

The subsisting challenge of job creation is the focus in Chapter One. Through the Poverty Alleviation Programme, a nation-wide emergency action to reduce the incidence of mass poverty, government provided financial incentives to skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled individuals to at least engage them in commercial activities or direct employment.

In the second chapter, Labour, Productivity and Work Ethics gained attention. As with the remaining chapters, the topic was preceded by the former president’s reactions to the various questions sent in by listeners or participants in previous topics—giving practical meaning and participatory relevance to the entire book.

Evoking the spirit of patriotism and nationalism, Obasanjo in Chapter Three, addresses the subject: What is in it for Nigeria? Here, he speaks to the soul of the nation, challenging the citizenry to fully embrace the fundamentals of nation-building. Thus rather than asking “what is in it for me”, conscientious patriots should ask “what is in it for Nigeria”, adding with a measured concern that the only way to achieve national rebirth is to put away the “mock and mess” of the past. The former president was emphatic that selfish tendencies begat corruption and corruption in turn begat national decay.

The book goes on to the 15th chapter and it discusses different issues of national importance during Obasanjo’s regime.

Therefore, The President Explains, is a welcome addition to our national history— with 20 pages of colour pictures of Obasanjo over the years, covering his local strides and relevance on the global stage. The sharp print in hard cover is excellent and the interrelated issues covered in the book also remain vital in any serious efforts toward national reawakening and development—be it in policy dimension or leadership attributes. Expectedly, controversy is inevitable here as the book further raises pertinent and subsisting issues in our national conversation. But in an environment where leaders rarely document their stewardship in memoir or any written form, the publication is significant.

Olusegun Obasanjo was Nigeria's military head of state (1976-9) and President (1999-2007). His career is made the focus for a history of Nigeria's first fifty years of independence (1960-2010) and of African continental affairs during the same period (Obasanjo having been an active opponent of apartheid and an architect of the African Union). The most important African leader of his generation, Obasanjo has had an extraordinarily diverse career as soldier, politician, statesman, farmer, author, political prisoner, Baptist preacher, and family patriarch. As a soldier, he secured the victory in Nigeria's civil war. As military head of state, he returned the country to civilian rule. For the next 20 years he was ceaselessly active, before spending three years as a political prisoner. Released from prison, Obasanjo served Nigeria as elected President from 1999 to 2007, until his growing authoritarianism and his manipulation of his successor's election ruined his reputation among many Nigerians. This book argues that the controversial end to his presidency must be understood in the light of his earlier career. The author has used mainly published sources, especially Nigerian newspapers and political memoirs, as well as recently released FCO documents in Britain.

John Iliffe is a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. He retired as Professor of African History at Cambridge in 2006 and has published widely on African history including: A Modern History of Tanganyika; The Emergence of African Capitalism; The African Poor: A History; Africans: the History of a Continent; Honour in African History and The African Aids Epidemic: A History.

On March 7,1999, following the election of General Olusegun Obasanjo as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Pastor Tunde Bakare in a message titled. "No More Walls" shared the vision he saw with the entire nation:

Rejoice not oh land, or your joy will be temporary. For I am bringing the nation, Nigeria, the rulers, the priests and the prophets there, to my threshing floor. I will judge Saul and his comrades, and after I have finished my purging, then I will restore to you permanent joy. Obasanjo is not your messiah. He is King Agag and the prophetic axe will fall upon his head before May 29. And I asked. "Lord. How are you going to judge Saul and what has be done?" God said, "I sent him on an assignment to overtake, to recover, to demolish but he didn't. He spared the fat calves, he spared the big sheep and he brought Agag back to Jerusalem. I will judge Saul and his comrades and after I have finished my purging, then your joy will be permanent.

Pastor Bakare followed up later in a message entitled. 'Nigeria, A Nation Given To A Lying Propaganda," with a stern warning that three things would characterize Obasanjo's regime:

• The family situation in Nigeria will collapse.

• Just like in the days of Ahab. there will be economic crimes perpetrated more than ever before.

• The occult movement will gain momentum that it will almost become impossible to stop it.

We are living witnesses that everything stated in Pastor Bakare's messages came to pass during Obasanjo's regime. Family life collapsed during Obasanjo's regime to the point that his own son accused him of sleeping with his wife. Under Obasanjo's watch. Transparency International (Tl) voted Nigeria as the most corrupt country in the world. The level of blood- letting under his regime remains unparalleled in Nigeria's history, save the civil war years and Boko Haram killings.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The author, Yinka Odumakin, is a political activist, journalist, and a media consultant. He has been on the Nigerian political scene for about three decades. He is married to the Civil Rights Campaigner, Dr Joe-Okei Odumakin.

"During his watch, a watchman has no sleep and no respite."
- Olusegun Obasanjo

Following in the steps of his previous memoirs, My Command and Not My Will, Olusegun Obasanjo's My Watch is more than the story of the Obasanjo presidency told by the man himself. It is a memoir of a lifetime spent in service to country, of a man who has been destined with the watch, with the vigilance, with the responsibility to his people to speak up and speak out.

My Watch spans large expanses of time, from the pre-colonial Owu history, to early Abeokuta and the last throes of an independent city state at turn-of-the-century colonial Nigeria, to the early life of its author, his civil war experience, his stewardship of the transitional government of 1976-1979, the interregnum, his second appearance on the national scene as a civilian president on Nigeria's return to democracy in 1999, the completion of the first civilian-civilian transfer of government in Nigeria's history that inaugurated the Yar'Adua presidency and signalled the end of Obasanjo's tenure in office, and the years hence.

Presented in three volumes, this exquisitely narrated memoir, in turns intensely personal and broadly nationalistic and international, completes a trilogy of autobiographies—My Command, Not My Will, andMy Watch—told by this sojourner of Nigerian and world history.

Book Info

Publisher: Kachifo Limited under its Prestige Imprint
Year of first release: 2014
Planned release date: November 2014
The book is presented as a three-volume boxset in hardcase and paperback editions. The book is trimmed at 150x235mm, portrait. The page counts are 506, 672, and 400 pages respectively for Volumes 1, 2, and 3. We present a well-designed, illustrated in full colour where relevant, and factual memoir written by the man himself.

Author's Bio

Olusegun Obasanjo, soldier, statesman, author and farmer, born on Ifo Market Day in Ibogun-Olaogun in what was then Abeokuta Province of 1930s colonial Nigeria, joined the Nigerian Army in 1958. He served in the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in the Congo between 1960-1961 and rose to become the General Officer Commanding the 3 Marine Commando Division of the Nigerian Army, which ended the 30-month Nigerian Civil War.

After the war, Obasanjo resumed his duties as the commander of the Nigerian Army Corps of Engineers. He was appointed Federal Commissioner (Minister) for Works in the Gowon Administration, and was appointed Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters—thus becoming the number 2 man in the government hierarchy—after the change of government in 1975.

Obasanjo served as Head of State of the Federal Military Government and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces from 1976-1979 following the assassination of General Murtala Muhammed in a failed putsch. He handed over to a civilian regime in 1979 and retired to private life of farming. As a statesman he was called upon by the international community, in one instance to serve as co-chair of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons' Group constituted to work on negotiated settlement for the ending of the South African Apartheid policy in 1985. He was also a candidate for the office of Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1991.

Olusegun Obasanjo, a fearless critic of bad government in Africa and particularly in Nigeria, was jailed after the "phantom coup" trial in 1995 by the Abacha Military Regime. He emerged from prison in 1998 and became a candidate for the presidency in the run-up to the military handover to a democratic civilian administration. He won the election and was sworn-in as President of the Federal Republic of Nigerian on May 29 1999.

He stepped down from the presidency in 2007 at the end of his second term and returned to his farm. He still serves the international community in several capacities. He is currently the chief promoter of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library.

Olusegun Obasanjo has authored several books, significant amongst them, My Command, about his experiences in the Nigerian Civil War; Not My Will, about his service to the nation as Military Head of State; This Animal Called Man, a philosophical reflection on the nature of man written during his time as a political prisoner; and Nzeogwu, about his friend and key figure in the January 1966 coup. This book, My Watch, his latest memoir, promises to join the other books as odes to a life of service to God, humanity and country.

Writing about the Obasanjo years compels rather more than the Presidential Legacy. These two volumes focus on what he found on the table as he came in as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and what he left on that table in 2007.

Akanda Eda: The Story of Olusegun Obasanjo provides a window into the enigmatic personality of Nigeria's longest an most famous ruler who has dominated and continue to dominate the affairs of his Country, moderating its sometimes turbulent temper and projecting its power and prestige all over the world.

The editor of this volume has compiled transcriptions of the Nigerian President's key speeches delivered between May 2000 and May 2001. There are some sixty speeches from a variety of political and state occasions, international summits and conferences, official openings and inaugurations. Reflecting Nigeria's prominence and diverse involvement in sub-regional, pan-African, and global affairs, the speeches, at home and abroad, encompass wide-ranging social, economic, diplomatic, foreign and health policy issues. Examples include: the address at the G15 Summit in Cairo; OAU summit addresses; commentaries on the impacts of globalisation/liberalisation in Nigeria; diplomatic meetings with Russia and the Far East; Budget addresses; meeting Thabo Mbeki, relations with South Africa and Nigeria's role in promoting peace, democracy and prosperity on the continent; and a speech from a pan-African conference on human trafficking and NGO activism.

The editor of this volume has compiled transcriptions of the Nigerian President's key speeches delivered between May 2000 and May 2001. There are some sixty speeches from a variety of political and state occasions, international summits and conferences, official openings and inaugurations. Reflecting Nigeria's prominence and diverse involvement in sub-regional, pan-African, and global affairs, the speeches, at home and abroad, encompass wide-ranging social, economic, diplomatic, foreign and health policy issues. Examples include: the address at the G15 Summit in Cairo; OAU summit addresses; commentaries on the impacts of globalisation/liberalisation in Nigeria; diplomatic meetings with Russia and the Far East; Budget addresses; meeting Thabo Mbeki, relations with South Africa and Nigeria's role in promoting peace, democracy and prosperity on the continent; and a speech from a pan-African conference on human trafficking and NGO activism.

Nzeogwu, the biography of Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, written by his best-known friend, General Olusegun Obasanjo, makes an interesting reading in this respect. There could be dozens of hypotheses on January 15, 1966 coup. Many commentators, like Kirk-Greene in Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria I, said, “The truth will never be satisfactorily established”, given the death of its chief actors. Many of those hypotheses were postulated not to explain, but to conceal the truth for sheer mischief in some intellectual-cum-political provinces. What cannot be disputed, however, was the role played by Nzeogwu, its principal architect. His published biography has given additional insights into the personal traits that led to the unfortunate event.

This book is an account of how President Olusegun Obasanjo turned Nigeria a law-governed state, a legal order, bequeathed to us by the British colonialists, into a lawless one. From an organization of power and coercive force limited and regulated by and to be exercised in accordance with law into a system of personal rule in which law was replaced more or less by arbitrary whims and personal or political interests of one individual, and in which government actions were determined largely by might, by the application of organized coercive force in the exclusive monopoly of the state, altogether careless of legality.

Written in a readable style, the book is indispensable to policymakers, lawyers, and politicians. It should be read by all.

When former President Olusegun Obasanjo penned his war memoirs, he called it My Command, a cocky title since no one expected anything less than command for a general's account of his soldiery during the Nigerian Civil War. Again whose command should it have been? Could he have woven the war tales of another general? Readers would have called him presumptuous. Yet, when his fellow combatants read his story, they called him presumptuous. They implied that the earthy man lied through his pen, the man who ran this country twice, once as civilian and the other as soldier, who claimed victory for the war, who affects the air of the soldier as statesman, who even tinkers with the toga of thinker, was not the soldier he claimed. To his credit though, Obasanjo might have claimed to be a soldier but not a gentleman. Get a copy and read on

The first wife of the former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo has broken it in spectacular style with a tell-all autobiography, Bitter-Sweet: My Life with Obasanjo. The author paints a portrait of her husband as a vindictive "master of decoy", a "violent and unrepentant wife-basher", and a man whose "womanising knows no bounds". It couldn't come at a worse time for the 72-year-old Mr Obasanjo who has been busily building a new profile for himself as a pan-African statesman second only to Kofi Annan.

What ensues is an almost slapstick riot of affairs and breathless high politics punctuated with domestic violence and desperation. And it's one in which Mama Iyabo is happy to name names. In the early 1970s her particular nemesis was an older married woman called Mowo Sofowora. One evening, she recalls: "I was eavesdropping on the phone downstairs while Obasanjo was in the bedroom. They had spoken for about 30 minutes when she then said she was having a headache. I had heard enough, so I butted in: 'It's that headache that will kill you, shameless married woman dating a younger man'. On hearing my voice, Obasanjo charged downstairs to beat me and we had one of the many fights that had come to define our marriage."

On another occasion Oluremi Obasanjo, now pregnant, was surprised to hear a nurse at the hospital announcing that Mrs Obasanjo was coming in with her sick children. "Lo and behold, she [Mowo] soon appeared with Busola and Segun, my children. I removed my head tie ... and lunged at her. 'Mowo, Oko ni o gba, o le gba omo mi,' I screamed, meaning: 'You may snatch my husband you can't snatch my kids.' I slapped and punched her. It was a spectacle. The hospital was turned upside down. I ran after the car that brought her, smashed the side glass." Surprisingly she reserves no particular ire for Stella Adebe-Obasanjo, who would go on to be the general's third and most notorious wife, eventually dying while undergoing liposuction in Spain. She describes Stella as just another in "the stable of Obasanjo's many ponies. Her problem was that she was too showy and lacked self respect. During our tempest, she would telephone me to announce that she was in complete control of my husband." In addition to the string of affairs, including one with a wife of another Big Man, the Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha, she reveals an extraordinary fallout with Murtala Muhammed, the brigadier he would later succeed in 1976 as military ruler of Nigeria. Muhammed's mistake was to reprimand him over his treatment of his wife: "Obasanjo was enraged that Muhammed was telling him how to take care of his wife. So, he grabbed Muhammed by the collar, in the presence of other officers, and challenged him to a duel."

The final word of course should go to Mama Iyabo, who says that it's about time more people followed her lead: "The public deserves to know a lot more about the experiences of public figures beyond the advertised public appearances they see. If my work has succeeded in doing so, we should look at it as expanding the democratic frontiers of free flow of information. Nigeria and Nigerians need to shed the culture of undue secrecy about public figures and public affairs."

Gripping and racy, it is a story you may not put down until you get to the last page. It is a worthy addition to the growing literature of adventures in power.

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